ROBERT REID, 72

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Robert Reid, 72, a police officer and nurse who for years was the only male member of a Chicago nursing sorority, died Friday, Aug. 23, of a heart attack while driving in Chicago, said his wife, Evelyn. Mr. Reid was a high school dropout and was a Chicago police officer for 28 years. He attended night classes to become a registered nurse and received a master's in counseling and guidance from Chicago State University, his wife said. He thought little of breaking the gender barrier in the nursing profession, colleagues said. In 1984 he pledged the Chicago chapter of Chi Eta Phi, a historically black sorority of nurses, and became its first male member. "Bob was a man's man: 250 pounds and 6-foot-4-inches, but he never had any qualms about being in the sorority. He was a gifted nurse and he loved his sisters. There are not a lot of men who were so secure in who they were," said Dicie Moore, a past chapter president of the sorority. Mr. Reid mostly let comments about his choice of profession roll off, but his wife recalled the fate of one critic at Cook County Hospital who called him a sissy. Mr. Reid, on police patrol, later found the critic drunk in an illegal club and gave him his comeuppance. "`Remember that sissy you were talking about? I'm taking you downtown today,'" his wife said he told the critic. In his retirement Mr. Reid led a group of men who lectured about prostate cancer in South Side barbershops and at local health department offices. In addition to his wife, he is survived by six sons, Mark, Richard, Anthony, Jeffrey, Matthew and Vincent, and a grandchild. Services have been held.